Docs Offset Low Medicare Payments With Higher Billing

Thousands of doctors and other medical professionals have added $11 billion or more to fees for elderly Medicare patients over the last decade by choosing to use more expensive billing codes and ignoring cheaper ones, a new study says.

The report "Cracking the Codes" from the non-profit investigative journalism organization Center on Public Integrity analyzed Medicare claims for a year and found thousands of providers "upcoding," which is "the practice of charging for more extensive and costly services than delivered, according to Medicare experts, analysis of the data and a review of government audits."

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